Glue up of thin pieces

I am making a picnic plate holder similar to the on in the picture and I have never glued up thin pieces. This is 1×6 red oak and I resawed it in half. What would be the best way to go about this. I have no pressure or glue on wood at this time. I usually use titebond 11.

-- Dewayne in Bainbridge, Ga. - - No one can make you mad. Only you decide when you get mad - -

23 replies so far

I just use regular bar clamps. On thin stock, I’ll usually put a spring clamp across the joints to help keep them flush.

If your parts try to bow or flex under the weight and presure of the clamps, you can lay them on a peice of plywood scrap and clamp the joints AND the plywood with the spring clamps. That ensures things stay where they should until the glue dries. (Wax the face of the ply scrap, or use wax paper or plastic wrap to keep the glue runout from bonding your workpiece to the ply.)

I’ve even been known to use spring clamps to secure thin stock to the bar of the bar clamp, since it was just sitting there all straight and in the right place.

-- "Hard work is not defined by the difficulty of the task as much as a person's desire to perform it.", DS251

If your edges are jointed good you barely need clamping preasure which largely reduces the possibility for the pieces to cup or pop out of alignment during glue up. Also one last precaution to take might be to glue the 3 panels up in 2 stages. Glue 2 together then glue the section to the remaining single piece.But just make sure the edges are jointed to perfection and little preasure will be needed.

If you are edge jointing with a hand plane, clamp BOTH pieces of stock in the vise with their edges as flush as possible, apply plane as normal to both pieces at the same time. edges will mate after a few strokes.

I agree with Jo Lydon. Just remember to put blocks under your two outside clamps on both ends of the clamp and put the middle clamp on top facing down, not underneath like the outside two. The blocks will raise the height of the two outside clamps (off the table) and allow the upper middle clamp to come down closer to the wood and reduce the cupping. Remember that too much pressure from your clamps will not only cup the wood but could end up starving the joint of all the glue due to excessive squeeze out. Just a thought, hope it helped Dewayne.Frank

I let my resawn boards acclimate a while before glue-ups… I think the moisture from the glue made a slight difference…

I tried doing it the traditional way… to run into trouble… I cut them apart & tried again, as I have described, and all was OK.

edit:I also glued up 3 panels in ONE glue-up for the Sides… used plenty of waxed paper… the boards & concrete blocks were needed to keep it all FLAT. On the Top/Bottom panels, it was 2 panels at a time.

I did use three clamps in the glued up. I just had them sitting in the clamps in the picture. I didn’t think about moisture diff in the thinner boards. The wood came from HD so didn’t think about moisture. I will be more patient next time. I did press down on the center clamp which I had on the top and used a small clamp on the ends at the joints. Next time I do this I will try the weighting idea as there is a slight bow in the glue up but I think it will pull up ok when I assemble the project.

This is my first experience at resawing and it was interesting trying to get even boards. I have a older 12” Craftsman bandsaw and used a stock from sears 1/2” blade. Not the best I know but it werked fairly well.

The wood is Red Oak as that is all the hard wood that HD carries. I usually werk in pine and this also is one of my first ventures into hard wood. I have turned a few cedar & oak bowls but never built anything except the scones I posted earlier. Sure is harder to sand hardwood than pine.

-- Dewayne in Bainbridge, Ga. - - No one can make you mad. Only you decide when you get mad - -